Crowdfunding for a reinforced Prospect Farm

We’re asking for some help from our community to fund infrastructure improvements on the farm. Due to our hilly plot, we rely on terracing to increase our growing space. Our current walls are made of loose stone collected from the land, as well as some smaller bamboo buffers, but these barriers are very susceptible to erosion and most need to be rebuilt every year.

Our infrastructure committee did some research on alternatives and made a pilot test of a gabion.

What is a gabion?A gabion is a resilient wall made by filling metal cages with stones and other material like gravel, dirt, or sand. Because of their sturdiness, they are often used in landscaping and civil engineering — you may have seen them on the sides of highways or in other large-scale applications. But they are also inexpensive and relatively simple to build, requiring only metal mesh, metal wire, and stone (much of which can be found). In this case, modest fundraising can do a lot to improve Prospect Farm’s infrastructure.

How can our community help?We are looking to raise $500 for materials to replace as many of our retaining walls as possible with gabions. The money will go toward the metal mesh plus possibly stone or other material to fill the cages if we can’t source enough from the farm. We plan to host workshops while building the walls to share this knowledge with the community. This will make Prospect Farm safer, more accessible, and more productive. We hope you will consider contributing to this effort — even donations as small as $5 will help us reach our goal.